


Normal

by notcrindy



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, a character study on a character i know nothing about, bet this is gonna be jossed right quick but i guess i can't get over Justin's characters, i fall in love with characters too quickly and then i do things like this, welp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 03:12:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13355295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcrindy/pseuds/notcrindy
Summary: When Duck Newton was born, no one thought he'd amount to anything.(They were wrong about that.Duck wished they weren't.)





	Normal

When Duck Newton was born, no one thought he’d amount to anything.

This was largely due to the fact that he was born too early and too small. Back in those days, a premature birth like that was surely enough cause to suspect an early death. It was so much a guarantee that his mother refused to look at him; his father, stoic, stared him right in the face. Unlike most of the babies born that day, he didn’t cry, and this was viewed as a bad omen. His parents were told not to get too attached to him, and as he was told growing up, his father cut his love off right then and there. As the story goes, his mother went through grieving before they’d even given the prognosis.

He’d had to have several operations done, none of which were particularly successful back then among infants. As the Newtons regarded their newborn child, too frail and small and silent, they were asked what to name him. Story went that there was a blanket the missus had been sewing with a certain breed of fowl on it, and so it seemed that was the only option. It wasn’t their first pick for the kid, of course; Mister Newton would grumble later that it set his boy up for a life of disappointment, originally planning on naming the boy after his own father (a proper name, something respectable that ran in the family, James). But Duck he was right there in the frenzy of the moment, and as they regarded their son without any regard for what his future held at all, there seemed nothing more fitting.

“Might as well give a real name to the next one,” Mister Newton grumbled, and the nurse had to remind him to put out his cigarette. “No sense wasting it on him.”

The result was that, unfortunately, the Newtons were more unprepared for a child than any other family on the block. When he survived, doctors all around them called him a miracle baby. He shouldn’t’ve been born when he was, they said, and then on _top_ of that, he shouldn’t have survived the hole in his heart, the smallness of his lungs. His birthdate, nurses insisted with awe, should’ve marked his death. Over the course of the next several months, the Newtons were permitted only to extremely limited access to their boy, and they weren’t allowed to hold him. Duck lingered in the precarious realm between the living and the dying for the first part of his life, unable to feel his mother’s warmth.

When they brought him home, everyone around insisted that Duck was a miracle. The neighbors made more of a fanfare than his family ever had; his birth and arrival home made the front page of the daily news, picture of his haggard and disheveled mother with flashbulbs popping off in her eyes all over the front page. He was an extraordinary little wonder by virtue of just existing to everyone in the neighborhood, which his mother politely deflected and his father blustered at whenever he got the chance.

As he grew, Duck hit more incredible milestones. He learned to walk at the youngest age anyone in his hometown ever knew a baby to do. He didn’t have a first word, he had a sentence, and it was something like, “I’m not special, Mrs. Thompson, not really.” Naturally, Mrs. Thompson had been quick to phone his folks, who were less than impressed. When he entered school, he was told he could’ve easily moved onto kindergarten long before the other kids, since he was practically literate by age three. It was all left up to the Newtons, though, who insisted that their boy be taught in the same environment as every other kid his age.

This, in turn, resulted in some resentments.

Not by Duck, not really. He felt a little uncomfortable the first time he finished a school textbook long before anybody else and tried to dial it back, recalling that his father had been careful to emphasize that there weren’t nothing different about him, and his mother told him to just blend in, for God’s sakes, Duck Newton. She only ever called him his full God-given name when she was serious, and he took it to heart, trying his best to make himself scarce even though he was younger and taller than everyone else in the class. He was embarrassed to ever be done with assignments sooner than the other children, so he tried to learn to mimic their paces, going out of his mind with boredom as he tried to fudge wrong answers and feign misunderstanding. Kindly, he sat through after-school lectures with the teachers, hoping they’d touch upon something he didn’t know.

He was patient with a system not built for him; over time, he tried desperately to get B’s, and then C’s. D’s he couldn’t quite fake, and F’s were pretty much out of the question, but it worked about 10% of the time anyway. This resulted in other kids picking on him something awful, at first, but when no one could quite land a solid punch on him without something _horrible_ happening to them, they stopped. Rumor had it was the first kid who ever shoved Duck Newton to the ground tripped shortly after and fell flat on his face, cracking his head against the pavement. Whispers on the playground told of bullies who untied his shoelaces, but you couldn’t find a kid willing to ‘fess up. Duck himself seemed sheepish about the entire thing, learning to spend most of his time indoors reading books.

There were a lot of things that Duck Newton was great at; there were a few things where he just landed squarely “okay,” and that was where he felt most at home. Given the boy took to spending so much time inside, it was either a great surprise or not a surprise at all that he started to study the outdoors. He wasn’t overly familiar with different types of birds, bees, or plants. He’d gotten a pretty solid B on every single biological, zoological, Earth scientific course. When you asked the boy the proper names for things found in nature, he didn’t know; he eagerly went to summer camp and reportedly stumbled upon stuff like poisonous berries and poison ivy without even really lookin’. Kids all around him came back in droves, sick and itching with skin peeling and bumps and hairs raising. He was always unscathed, and never had a single remarkable story to tell.

He didn’t burn; he didn’t tan, either. He couldn’t tell you how to fish, but he was the first one to catch one, and it was bigger’n the size of every camp counselor’s head put together. Didn’t know what to do the first time he was spotted by a black bear, but kids who witnessed the incident said that honest to God, the bear took one look at him and left him alone. He didn’t have an affinity for nature; he knew leaves changed color in the autumn and then dropped off and died in winter, and that was about it.

But he knew that was his calling, just the same.

Given his inexperience, he knew he shouldn’t’ve gotten the job. He hadn’t dared to go job-hunting ‘cuz the economy was in the shitter, and he knew how impractical it was to apply in the first place, but the forest was so beautiful. He couldn’t tell you, originally, what populated the damn thing; hell, maybe, later on, he’d tell you that it was _still_ a mystery to him after all he’d seen. But the pay was decent, not too great and not too poor. He was promised a great deal of solitude to which he’d grown accustomed. He didn’t have to learn how to operate or use any weaponry, and the most he’d ever have to deal with were unruly campers or a fire or two. He applied somehow not expecting to get in, ‘cuz it was his first gig after all, long before he’d ever had any real office or retail experience of which to speak. It should’ve gone to someone more qualified, more passionate, more knowledgeable.

Instead, it went to him.

“Park ranger, huh,” Papa Newton said, taking a long drag of a cigarette. It was a mystery the house hadn’t gone up in flames by then. “How about that.”

Duck had only hoped for a quiet life. This, he thought, was something that couldn’t possibly make him stand out. He’d approach people in the hat and uniform, and maybe they thought he was someone of authority, but that was more due to the clothing and not any quality of his work. He failed to notice several advances from ladies in his hometown; maybe he ignored advances from the gentlemen, too. He was nominated for class president without even running; he won without even an effort. On the night of prom, he didn’t show up, but he just _knew_ he was Prom King deep in his guts. This, on the other hand, was something without accolades or social standing. This was an ordinary job for an ordinary man with an ordinary life and nothing else.

He was living on his own when the dreams started up. Duck thought that this was probably a terrific stroke of luck, on account of the fact they were so vivid. He woke himself up mumbling words he didn’t understand; he was haunted by visions so real and clear he could’ve sworn he’d seen them somewhere before, but he didn’t know where. He’d help himself to his usual unremarkable can of alphabet soup and there the words would be: “FATE,” and when stirred again, “DESTINY,” which was even more unlikely. Flocks of birds started becoming something he tried very hard _not_ to monitor too closely because they had a message for him.

 **ONLY YOU, DUCK,** the sky insisted. **YOU ARE THE FATE OF THIS WORLD.**

He started keeping his gaze on the pavement.

 **SPECIAL,** insisted an entire colony of ants.

He kindly stepped around them and chalked it up to coincidence.

 **YOU  
** **ARE  
** **EXTRAORDINARY,** insisted fog on the bathroom mirror.

He started taking cold showers.

And then one day, he happened upon somewhere he belonged. He liked it there, he thought. He didn’t believe in cryptids, but the strange thing was he felt like he fit in nonetheless, among all the hocus pocus and the bullshit. He remembered so clearly the day it had happened; some young kid workin’ and livin’ there on the regular had got all worked up because he was _the_ Duck Newton, who’d set the World Record for something or another, and he was practically a legend.

The old man running the place was real careful about it, glanced him up and down with all the savvy and expertise of someone older than he was and not afraid to remind everyone of that fact. This man, Duck could tell, fancied himself quite the judge of character. He took a minute to assess him, whispering to his young ward.

“That’s Duck Newton, huh?” The old man asked without any real sense of volume.

“You’re darn right it is, sir. The man’s practically _famous._ ”

Duck froze as he felt the eyes on him, ready for some absurd declaration.

“I dunno,” Ned said instead without a trace of irony, “seems pretty normal to me.”

Duck smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> i--i don't know. HELP ME. I'M IN LOVE WITH THIS ONE ALREADY, GUYS. hope this is decent even though it probably won't seem that great in a week or two. that's probably how Duck'd like it though, huh?? thanks always for reading. <3


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